ForgetMeNot
by ShonenAiSorcerer
Summary: Yohji remembers who was there for Aya. Yohji/Aya, shonen ai, language, angst, author jumping on the MPreg bandwagon, with a significant deviation


Notes: First and foremost, I owe major debts of gratitude to Joybug and blackorcid who are currently writing two lovely pregnant Aya fics for us (and you should all go read and review "Jealousy" and "Stepping Up" as soon as you finish this). I have been toying with the idea of MPreg Aya, but I can hardly compete with their extended works, so, I've settled for this oneshot. Thanks for the inspiration, you two, and this is dedicated to you.

Please note, the primary genre of this is angst. Also, I think I gave in to the melodrama more than usual, so be on the lookout for OOC. Other warnings include shonen ai and language.

Yohji's POV.

Forget-Me-Not

He was alone the first time, but only the first time. I was there for the rest.

I fought him when he came home, taking a fist to the face before it was over. There was blood on the hall carpet when we stopped, but I was never sure whether it came from his arm or my nose. He was so angry that night, trembling with it as he stood there in the hall and refused to look at me as he apologized. I accepted, but he didn't give me a reason. And I let it go.

A few weeks later, I saw him drop the vase. It was fragile, so it didn't break as much as shatter into a thousand sparking shards on the tile around his feet. There was more blood as he bent, awkwardly, like something hurt, to pick up the few larger pieces and managed to slice his palm when he clutched one too hard, releasing a splash of scarlet. I sent him to the bathroom sink while I swept up the mess, wondering what the hell had gotten into him.

He didn't say.

But then I was there after the mission. We'd been out all night, skulking around behind a warehouse before striking. Twenty minutes later, the sun was rising and we were heading home in the Seven. He had been slouched against the window, then he sat up, suddenly, demanding that I pull over. I did, even managed to get out in time to hold his hair as he threw up on the side of the road. He held the open door with one hand, trying to keep on his feet as he pressed my handkerchief to his mouth. When I asked, he said he was okay.

I knew he was lying.

He knew I knew.

Then Manx came and we all knew everything.

She spoke dispassionately about Kritiker's little experiment, while Aya leaned against the wall, head down and his eyes shadowed. He didn't move when Manx dropped the word "fetus," nor when she gave up "test subject" for "pregnant." He ignored Omi's shocked gasp and the slightly sick expression on Ken's face.

Though she asked us to expect the hormone-induced mood swings and keep an eye on our leader's delicate condition, Manx made it clear that it would be over soon, anyway, when they had the data. Aya shouldn't worry, apparently, because he didn't have to see it all the way through. She shrugged, and I nearly punched her. Ken slung one strong arm around my waist and grabbed by arm hard enough to bruise it. She left quickly after that, and Omi slipped out behind her for some more Q and A. Ken released me, slowly, like I might turn on him; he headed up the stairs with a strange, wary glance towards Aya.

I waited, and so I was in the mission room when he slid down the wall. He tugged his knees close, wrapping his sweater-clad arms around them, and buried his head. He was crying. I was stunned and awkward, more than a little scared as I patted him lightly on the back. But when his back hitched with an uncontrolled sob, fear broke into compassion and I sat on the floor and pulled him over. He laid his head in my lap and wept.

He hadn't wanted it, he got out between sobs; he hadn't even known until he went in for his physical. I let him go for a while, then said some vague, comforting things that didn't mean shit, but he nodded, tugging himself up and using his orange sleeve to wipe at his eyes. I realized Aya was a pretty crier, all crystal tears and no runny nose; I was jealous. I refused to let the moment go awkward again by telling him so, adding, quietly, that I might kill the Kritiker doctors. We shared a small smile when he admitted that my nose had not been the only one injured the day he found out; the doctor's was broken.

It was me that offered him a hand up and a smile devoid of curious prying, despite all my questions.

He seemed to appreciate it, and so I was the one who picked up the phone when the doctor called two weeks later. I showed up, my hair unbrushed, in the office of emergency contact, meeting Manx in the sterile halls of Magicbus. He was okay, she said; I asked how any of it was okay, followed shortly by what the hell had happened. Over a cheap cup of coffee she told me that Aya had reached the three month mark, the intended termination of the test.

Had they, I asked.

No. Kritiker wanted more data.

Aya was unconscious, though, through some chain of events that started with a talk with the gray haired man I called Dr. Nimrod and ended with a death threat halfway to completion before the quick application of a sedative and the nurse's skillful removal of Dr. Nimrod's surgical scissors from the swordsman's loosening hand. Manx wondered idly whether Aya could have made good on his threat to cut the doctor open with them; I had once seen him kill a man with a letter opener.

And then I was by his hospital bed getting directions from the balding doctor who liked to think I could keep Aya calm. Warm, probably. Fed, maybe. Calm, no fucking way. He insisted it was crucial for Aya's health. Then, after asking if he might be blunt and receiving my invitation to go the fuck ahead, he told me it was going to get rough. He was unsure, and it made me more than a little nervous, as he talked about "side effects." When I went out for a smoke, Manx offered me a stipend to take care of Abyssinian. I told her to shove it, but it appeared in my account anyway.

When he had come to in the hospital, he'd been instantly pissed, but it rushed away when he saw me. I took him home, just like he asked. He hovered in his doorway, looking sick and unsure, but went to bed with only a mumbled thank you.

I hadn't thought much about my post until I saw him staring intently into the refrigerator a few weeks later. I asked if I could fix him anything, and he glared at me like I'd grown another head while admitting he wanted something with cucumbers. I explained about cravings; he asked me how many girls I had gotten pregnant. Indignant, I took my keys and left, but I brought him back some cucumbers that he ate with salt. The next night he made meatloaf; Aya hates meatloaf, but I love it. He ate salad with the last of the cucumbers.

When I caught him eating a pint of double fudge chocolate ice cream and calling it dinner, I realized I needed to watch him more closely. It was stupid, I knew, but somehow I'd become attached, not just to Aya, but to the little thing growing inside him. And by then, I thought he had to. He wasn't obvious about it, but every once in a while, when he wasn't paying too much attention, Aya would rest his hand against his belly and his expression would go soft and distant. It was a sweet expression that never lasted very long.

We didn't talk about the end, except once. I had taken up the habit of tucking Aya in at night; he wandered otherwise, up until all hours of the morning. I wasn't going out much by then, unless it was to pick up some double fudge chocolate ice cream from the twenty-four hour gas station on the corner, but I'd closed the shop, before, and slipped out to have dinner with Ken and Omi and go to a movie. Aya declined an invitation.

It was after eleven when we returned, and I went to his room with the intention quietly adjusting his covers and, if he happened to be awake and in a good mood, stealing another goodnight kiss to his cheek. With the amount of hormones Kritiker was pumping into him, none of us ever knew how quick he would be to anger or, much to Ken's dismay, how quick to be hurt. Still, I didn't expect him to be so…open.

I went in without knocking. The lamp was on, and it was clear he was far from sleeping. He was on his back on the fully made bed, staring at the ceiling. He had shed his shirt, probably getting ready to sleep. It was the first time I'd seen him without the oversized sweatshirts he'd been wearing, and I couldn't help but stare at the swollen curve of his stomach as it protruded just above the open fly of his jeans. It was smaller, maybe, than the average woman's at almost six months, but not by too much, and was unaccompanied by a filling out of his hips (he had not gained nearly enough weight) or any indication of breasts (though I had overheard him tell the doctor that his nipples were painfully sensitive). His belly was strange; I wanted to touch it.

Aya's hands remained flat against either side of the bump, but his eyes shifted towards me as I took a seat at the edge of the bed; he had been crying. I brushed his one eartail away from his lips, letting my touch linger along his cheek before settling on the other side of his head so I could lean close and talk to him.

I asked what was wrong; he shook his head. I waited; he told me I was making him nervous, leaning over like that. I smiled, glad to lay down beside him. He moved his hands then, reaching to do up the pants; I told him to leave them, and he did, rolling to his side and tucking his hands against his chest so I could press close against his back. I draped one arm over him, letting my own hand rest against the pale flesh of his belly.

He started to cry again. I went to pull my hand away, but he caught it, pressing his own on top of it and guiding it down a little. Chocking back the sobs, he asked me if I felt it.

I did, a fluttery little pressure. A kick.

Stuck in my own amazement, I didn't realize why he was so sad until he told me: they were going to kill it.

I was there to hold him tight while he talked. And in those hours, Aya talked more than he had in years. The tears came and went as he blamed Kritiker and himself, told me how he'd ended up there, and promised I could meet his sister who would, he knew, be a wonderful mother someday. He told me he thought he would make a lousy parent, but the words rang false, and he admitted that, in some ways, he'd like to try. He never said he wanted to keep it, maybe because he knew it wasn't an option.

I held him, all night, waiting until he fell asleep before I let my own, hot tears slip out against his silky hair. I knew I wasn't a pretty crier.

That night was an introduction to the misery of the next weeks, as if we never really got over it. Aya didn't want to eat; I didn't either, but I knew he had to. For what, he would ask me, and I didn't have an answer beyond his own health. His arrangements in the shop waffled between pale, delicate mixes of roses, carnations, and a profusion of baby's breath and sullen compositions of large white moonflowers and purple nightshade blooms. He didn't go see his sister, and while I had overlooked his brief training sessions previously, I had to call him down more than once in those weeks when they exceeded half an hour. On Thursday, he fell and scraped his shoulder on the window sill. I was worried, but he said the baby put his body off balance.

After that night, he always called it the baby. No one else dared, until I slipped up.

The next week he wanted to go on a mission with us, though Manx had unofficially barred him from such. I told him to stay home; he insisted. I got angry, telling him that he had to think of the baby. He replied that he was always thinking about the baby. We faced off in the kitchen, and only Omi's intervention kept us from blows. Aya didn't go, and I found him asleep on the couch when I got back, head tilted awkwardly to the side and the throw pillow from my bed pressed tightly to his stomach. I took him to my room. Laying so close, I realized he had a fever.

The next night I rushed him to the hospital. He doubled over in the parking lot, and I scooped him into my arms to rush inside. Dr. Nimrod pried him from my arms and tried to take him away; I followed, insisting with my wire that I was sure as hell not leaving his side. A nurse was told to get me some scrubs, for god's sake, and dressed in loose green and a white mask, I was ushered through the operating room doors.

He was conscious on the table. There was a cloth suspended at his neck so that he couldn't see the rest of his body. I stood near his head, resting my gloved hand on his forehead and trying to say reassuring things. The nurses worked quickly, covering him in blue cloth, isolating his swollen abdomen and swabbing it with iodine. I asked if he could feel it, but he couldn't.

I was glad. The doctor picked up a scalpel and cut an impossibly deep, long slash between Aya's hipbones. I had to look away as he spread the lips of the red smile; I wondered if Aya heard the noises, but I just asked if he was okay. There was a call for another knife, some shuffling, then a sudden sound of giving way.

A tiny baby hung in the doctor's hand as the nurse clamped and snipped the thin umbilical cord. It was wet and wrinkled and bloody, but it moved. I couldn't help but tell Aya; it moved, it moved, I whispered, kissing him on the forehead. He asked me where the baby was, but the nurse was shuffling it quickly away.

I stayed with him for the stitches. He looked exhausted, but he fought sleep all the way. Bandaged and slightly drugged, he was relocated to a private room. I was there, too. None of the staff dared part me from him, not after the wire incident. I had dropped the mask and gloves, but I sat by his bed in the green, short-sleeved scrubs, too glad to get a hold of his hand. We didn't say anything.

Dr. Nimrod entered. He babbled for a minute about the value of the experiment; Aya cut him off, stopping just short of demanding his baby, demanding news instead. The doctor's eyes went sad, like he had just realized Aya would have a mother's attachment to the thing they had grown inside him. He couldn't meet our eyes after that, but was too well trained to delay the news.

The baby was premature. It was smaller than average, even for twenty-seven weeks, and some of the development seemed off, probably because Aya's body had not been fully equipped to deal with the pregnancy. Her—Aya interrupted to ask if it was really a girl; it was—her eyes weren't developed yet, and, more crucially, neither were her lungs. She couldn't breathe on her own for long, and her brain wasn't…he drifted off, shaking his head. I asked for a chance, for the sake of the hand holding mine almost painfully. For me too, I think. It was denied. He was sorry, but there wasn't any chance.

She was alive, though, Aya asked. His voice was small, quiet.

Yes.

Could he hold her? Would it hurt her?

No, it would be fine, if he was sure…

He was.

I watched as the nurse settled the loose bundle in Aya's arms. She was tiny, no more than a few pounds, but pale pink and beautiful wrapped in the soft blanket and with the tiny pink cap, too big, over her head. Her eyes were closed, sealed, but one minute fist lifted to rub at her cheek. She had the smallest fingernails I had ever seen.

Aya held her close to his chest, looking down as if memorizing every feature. He was crying, silently; his lip trembled as tears slipped down his cheeks and onto the baby's blanket as he ran gentle touches down her little arm, over those tiny fingers, across the perfect fingernails. I reached, so carefully, to touch her hand. It nearly broke my heart when he offered to let me hold her and when, just for minute, I took her small life into my arms. I wanted longer, but she wasn't very warm, and I couldn't keep her from him.

She didn't make any noise.

Aya spoke to her, telling her that he knew who she was, that he had enjoyed their time together, that he had felt her kick and knew there was life in her somewhere, strong life. He told her about her aunt, and he told her his real name, and that he was her daddy. Then he told her he loved her.

Her hand stopped moving, and her little chest rose and fell more slowly.

He begged me to stop it, but I only knew how to take life, not give it.

I touched her head, pushing back the pink cap to reveal a thick dusting of scarlet hair.

Aya kissed her gently.

The little chest was still.

And I was there while he held her cooling body, and I held his arms when they ripped her away.

Kritiker denied him any burial, any records, any pictures. I cursed Manx and the doctor and the whole goddamn organization.

It took me several hours to shake off the sedative and find myself in my own bed. I panicked, and it was with dark desperation that I searched the house. He was in the closed shop, forehead and fingers pressed against the cool glass of the display case, staring at the forget-me-nots.

~fin~

Notes: I just made myself sad…leave some anti-depressants please, or at least a review…


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